He has been an editorial page columnist at the Mexican newspapers La Jornada, Reforma and El Universal since 1985, publishing hundreds of articles about environmental, political and literary topics.

They have two daughters, Eva Aridjis, a filmmaker in New York City (Niños de la calle, La Santa Muerte, The Favor, The Blue Eyes, Chuy, el hombre lobo, Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus) and writer Chloe Aridjis, in London (Asunder, Book of Clouds, Sea Monsters, Topografía de lo insólito, Dialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, Essays & A Critical Portrait).

[1] In March 1985 Aridjis founded and became president of the Group of 100, an association of prominent artists and intellectuals, including Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Rufino Tamayo, Gabriel García Márquez, Álvaro Mutis, Augusto Monterroso, Francisco Toledo, Leonora Carrington, Mathias Goeritz, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Elena Poniatowska and others, devoted to environmental protection and the defense of biodiversity in Mexico and Latin America.

Under his leadership the Group of 100 achieved in 1986 the official decree ensuring protection for the forests where the migratory monarch butterfly overwinters and in 1990 a permanent ban on the capture and commercialization of all seven species of sea turtle in Mexico.

The Group was able to thwart the building of dams on the Usumacinta River that would have flooded 500 square kilometers of the Lacandon forest and submerged important Mayan ruins.

Among the participants were J. M. G. Le Clézio, Sherwood Rowland, Petra Kelly, Gert Bastian, Peter Raven, Lester Brown, and Augusto Roa Bastos.

In 1992 he presented the Morelia Declaration, a statement on the environment signed by more than 1000 writers and scientists from 66 countries, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where he spoke at the Global Forum with the Dalai Lama, Petra Kelly, Tom Hayden, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, among others.

Among the participants were J. M. G. Le Clézio, Rita Dove, Kjell Espmark, Bärbel Bohley, Bei Dao, W. S. Merwin, John Ralston Saul, Bill McKibben and Breyten Breytenbach.

Besides the Morelia (Michoacan) Festival in 1981, Aridjis also organized and presided over two international poetry festivals in Mexico City, in 1982 and 1987, bringing to Mexico poets such as Jorge Luis Borges, Seamus Heaney, Günter Grass, Vasko Popa, Allen Ginsberg, Kazuko Shiraishi, Ted Hughes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Andrei Voznesensky, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Lars Forssell, Marin Sorescu, Tadeusz Różewicz, André du Bouchet, Eliseo Diego, Mazisi Kunene, Günter Kunert, Breyten Breytenbach, W. S. Merwin, Rita Dove and Paul Muldoon.